Some thoughts on the bittorrent activity surrounding the first episode of Game of Thrones Season 7, first broadcast by HBO on 2017-07-16 at 9pm EST.
Context
Here are results from several previous media properties, all measured using the same methodology (See the alpha60 methodology paper). For each property, experimental results were tabulated per-day, and the day with the highest number of unique peers is used to establish a high-water mark for the bittorrent swarm. The largest activity is seen within 36 hours of the first broadcast. For weekly context, the same properties over the first week.
Notes
Overall, very strong peer swarm for Game of Thrones. In all regions, all ranges of resolutions, the new high-water mark.
Of particular note:
- Korea dominates 1080p resolution
Very early, and across all individual torrents that make up the episode’s full torrent collection, Seoul establishes a very strong high-resolution preference that is maintained during the duration of the swarm sample. For some reason, 1080p piracy dominates all other resolutions in South Korea. Torrents that are 1080p resolutions are colored in the pink-purple spectrum and 720p resolutions in blue, and the size of the circle is proportional to the number of peers downloading at the specific geo location during the specified time frame. In the picture above, an image of the peer swarm from 2017-07-18 shows Seoul dominating global peer activity by a wide margin, and with the highest resolution media files exclusively.
- USA averages 720p/sd resolution
- Per-4-x-minute-sample swarm videos
See 5-day Game of Thrones, every sample.
alpha60 
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